Film Utopia

Sunday Movie Blog: The Screenwriter's Notebook & the Verbal Photograph

photo Eva the Weaver

"Near midnight. At the subway. Torrential rain cascades down the steps of the exit. The young man in front of me rescues a destroyed umbrella from the station's dustbin; tonight, even a broken umbrella is better than nothing."

"Ten o'clock. Cubans gather at a Milan railway station bar, to drink beer and to bathe in Latino Rap, blaring from the cassette player on the booth's counter. I am the only European who drinks coffee here. Italians, generally, aren't fans of Orisha. They don't even glance at us, as they scuttle past."

For the past six years I have always carried at least one notebook with me. I also carry a camera. Although, these days, when I say camera I mean an iphone. The camera I use to collect locations. The notebook I use as a tool to develop my observational skills.

Most of the screenplays from unknown screenwriters, that I read, suffer uniformly from a lack of observational detail. By this, I mean that the story-telling seems to be a pastiche of other movies and other TV shows, rather than based on any real world observation of people and how they behave. I hate to say it, but it seems like the vast majority of screenwriters do all of their observation of life from a couch, in front of a TV set.  I understand this. One of the main reasons I was first drawn to writing for film and TV, was precisely because I love films and television. I have probably logged more hours as a consumer of film and TV drama than is good for a person.  Many years ago, I realised recycling things I've seem in the cinema or on the TV, either consciously or unconsciously, isn't the best way to work. What changed my perspective, was when I realised that the drama I really loved, had managed to step away from the established tropes and memes of the industry; although I wanted my drama to be drama, I also wanted to be delighted by a fresh perspective. The drama I respected, drew its inspiration from literary and cinematic traditions, but was also underpinned with detailed observation of humanity.

A unique perspective is what makes a writer valuable. Which is great news, because a unique perspective is the one thing that every human being has. Nobody in the world has experienced life or the world in the way that you have. You point of view is and always will be unique. Of course, time spent in front of the television or in the cinema slightly compromises the uniqueness of that perspective, because you have aligned your point of view with every other human being who has watched that movie. Conversely, any time spent wandering about in the real world increases the divergence of your perspective. Which is why I carry a notebook. I am totally aware that if I see something interesting, when I am out and about, that I am probably the only person in the world who is in exactly the right place, at exactly the right time, to witness it. So, when I see something that fascinates or amuses me, I write it down.

I call my observations, verbal photographs. I do that, because that is the exercise I have set myself, to see a moment of interesting behaviour in the real world and to jot it down, as if I was describing a moment in a film. The key elements for me, are that the moment is both visual, and at the same time that it also contains meaning.

So, for instance, the note I made last year:

"Ten o'clock. Cubans gather at a Milan railway station bar, to drink beer and to bathe in Latino Rap, blaring from the cassette player on the booth's counter. I am the only European who drinks coffee here. Italians, generally, aren't fans of Orisha. They don't even glance at us, as they scuttle past."

The first time I found this bar at the railway station, it seemed naturally filmic. It's just a concrete booth with a few seats, but it's one of the few places in Milan where I've seen an immigrant group own their own territory. It's an understatement to say that Latinos and other immigrant groups are marginalised in Milan. All my other notes about Latinos in Milan, are about watching them work as illegal traders, on the subways and the streets, where they are under constant threat of arrest. This one observation works for me. It's exactly the kind of moment I'd insert into a movie, if the theme was "racism and alienation."

Carrying a notebook forces me to actively observe the world and to take notice of the stories that are unfolding in front of me. This is a better way for me to be a writer to be in the world, rather than hiding behind a newspaper and plugging myself into my ipod. I don't think, as a writer, I can afford to cut myself off from the world. Especially, if I have any ambition to be a screenwriter.

Regardless of whether a screenwriter feels the need to draw material from the world, as opposed to pulling ideas out of their imagination (ass), there is another reason for a screenwriter to jot down observations. The discipline of creating verbal photographs from observed situations, is exactly the kind of writing that most newbie screenwriters struggle with.  The visual is too vital a component of cinematic story-telling, for a screenwriter to be lacking or inadequate. Screenplays are all about selling the visual. They are very precisely about taking your visualisation of a scene, and selling that to the reader. Like any other skill, the creation of succinct verbal snapshots doesn't come naturally. There is real craft in being able to convey the visual story of a situation, in just a few well chosen words. It's more than just seeing what is happening, it is about knowing which details are important and which aren't. In a situation where the protagonist sees a young woman sauntering through a piazza, the angle of the sun and the opaqueness of the cotton fabric may be the key elements... or not, because it is by understanding and conveying the points that are significant to us as individuals, that we create our own unique voice from our own unique point of view.

Notebooks and observation are key skills for the cinematic screenwriter. For me they are connected. I can not imagine trying to improve as writer, without the daily discipline of observing the world around me and the continual attempt to convey my point of view in a concise and engaging manner.

Oh, and if you haven't heard the Cuban band Orisha... well, this them. Enjoy.

keep writing and viva la revolution

Posted via email from Filmutopia's Sunday Morning Movie Blog

Sunday Movie Blog: Guns Don't Kill People, What's at Stake Does.

photo by Adam Prince

Two men in a cave. They repeatedly hit each other with sticks. This carries on for two minutes.

The question... is it drama?

The answer is no, of course it's not. It is just conflict, it isn't drama.

The same two men, brothers. One of them wants to leave the cave to rescue his wife, the other knows that his brother will die in the attempt. So, they pick up sticks and they fight... one is fighting to save his wife, the other to save his brother.  The action is the same, it is still two men hitting each other with sticks, but now the audience understands what is at stake. Suddenly, the same action has gone from being meaningless, to being drama.

Regardless of how many times people say it, drama ISN'T created through conflict, drama is created through the audience's understanding of what is at stake at any given moment; conflict is a by-product of drama, not the root cause of it.

The key point in that last sentence is "at any given moment." For me, every single line, scene or sequence in a screenplay is defined by the way it shifts the audience's understanding of what is at stake. Every action relates to how that character is being driven by what's at stake or informs the audience of a shift in what's at stake. Every line of dialogue reveals, in the subtext, the character's attempt to resolve what's at stake. In a very real sense, each action and each spoken word is an attempt to diffuse the tensions created by what's at stake.

Last week I wrote about how I sometimes use the phrase "the price of..." to help isolate the theme of a story. As you can see, there is a direct relationship between the idea of "the price of..." and the idea of "what's at stake?" However, the intensity of the drama will relate directly to the writer's ability to create significant conflict, though an understanding of what's at stake for each character... and, ultimately how what's at stake relates directly to the theme of the story.

I like the phrase, significant conflict. It's a good compass for me as a writer. It gives me a raft of useful questions to test each line of the script for relevance:

Is this piece of action significant to what's at stake?
Does it inform the audience of a shift in the stakes?
If not, does it help the audience understand the character's attempt to diffuse the tension of what is at stake?
And, ultimately, are the stakes significant enough and related to the theme?

One of things that has always baffled me, is why so many people hold up the major studio blockbusters as the pinnacle of the craft of screenwriting? The vast majority of the studio movies are constructed around the lowest common denominator of "what's at stake." The lowest level being, "the hero's love-interest's life is at stake." And that's it... hero, damsel in distress, ninety minutes of chasing and shooting. From where I am sitting, that is the easiest kind of script to write. The stakes are predictable and constant. The heavy lifting in these movies being removed from the script and into the sheer spectacle of the action.

(Actually, these movies for me, are no more complicated than two men hitting each other with a variety of sticks, in various locations, until one falls off a building... which is another way of saying they aren't really drama. They are the point at which the writing of cinema and the writing of drama diverge into two separate things. Something worth understanding, when thinking about cinematic writing as a craft. A large part of the industry and the craft is totally unrelated to any classical understanding of story-telling. It is purely cinematic, rather than dramatic).

For me, the next level up from that kind of writing is when each character has multiple things at stake, some of them are straight forwards and work in the world, some of them are emotional. Sometimes the character is only dealing with one of the things that is at stake... let's call that the A Plot. Sometimes the character is dealing with the emotional thing that is at stake... let's call that the B Plot. However, it is possible to take the audience on a real journey, if the A Plot comes into conflict with the B Plot. Or, in other words, when the character is forced to chose between two things that are at stake. Where the conflict is internal rather than between two characters. Through-out the writing process, relating what's at stake for everyone to the overall theme, stops the story from becoming incohesive or messy.

What this tells me, is that conflict isn't ever just a dynamic between characters, but is created by what's at stake. Two characters can come into significant conflict when what's at stake for them is opposing... or a single character can be in significant conflict when forced to chose between two conflicting needs to resolve the things at stake.

Without this understanding of how drama is created by significant, stakes driven conflict, too many screenplays become people shouting at each other for no discernible reason, chasing each other for no discernible reason, and shooting each other for no discernible reason. This is what happens when people can't tell the difference between conflict and drama.

Basically, in the movie world, guns don't kill people, what's at stake does.

keep writing and viva la revolution

Posted via email from Filmutopia's Sunday Morning Movie Blog

Sunday Blog: Themes and Misdemeanours - Where Structural Screenwriting Fails to Deliver

Photo by MelEdwardsPhots

Last week I scratched the surface of cinematic screenwriting... or at least I talked about the importance of the sequence as a concept for writers. This week I promised I'd write about thematic screenwriting. However, one of the things I've become aware of is the impossibility of talking about the way I approach screenwriting, without it sounding like an alternative to structural screenwriting. That just isn't the case. What I've been trying to do, is to redress the balance. Mainly because the vast majority of the people I see writing about screenwriting, talk as if the process was solely a structural one. Basically, if you understand the key points of three act structure, if you have a grasp of McKee's theories about story, if you have a working knowledge of Campbell's "hero's journey," then the rest of the screenwriting process is merely about colouring in that framework with an interesting idea and some appealing characters. In many respects that's a very Aristotelian approach to the craft of screenwriting, in that it reduces the activity to core elements, which then just need reassembling in a pleasing order. I know that isn't the case. I know this, because if it were the case, then anyone could write a screenplay, anyone could be a script editor, anyone could be a producer. In a strictly logical world, that ought to be the case. Read the right books, practice using the building blocks until you're proficient, then write your blockbuster. It should be that simple. Of course, it isn't. We know that because the all the information out there tells me that the vast majority of the script written by unknown screenwriters will be unacceptably and uniformly bad. Talk to enough script editors, script readers, agents and producers and they will uniformly tell you that about 98% of the spec script they are presented with are diabolical. What this tells me, is that structural understanding isn't enough. Writing scripts is more than just dragging a protagonist through a perfectly crafted tale of redemption, told in three acts.

The question that has interested me for the past five years is: if it more that just structural, what are the missing elements?

The conclusions I've come to is that generally, the four missing elements are:

A lack of understanding of the language of cinema... or, in other words, the way story is told via movement, editing and control of the view point of the audience

Poor quality observation... or, in other words, a lack of real world observation of human behaviour and the human condition

No natural feel for language... that the writer just doesn't listen to the way language works (this tends to show up in poor dialogue)

and, finally,

A lack of content... or, in other words, the story is merely a homage to the writer's favourite film, as opposed to an exploration of the human condition

None of the above issues are structural. They are about observation, understanding of the human condition, a feel for the heritage and language of cinema... and, finally about having a natural feel for language itself. To me, those are the areas where the vast majority of screenwriters tend to fail... not really in terms of the structure.

For me, the primary fix for all of those problems is to approach the screenplay thematically. This isn't to dismiss structure, but merely to relegate it to its rightful place. The structural part of screenwriting is done in the preparatory phase, when a beat sheet is created... and, as I've said before, for me, a beat sheet is merely a set of unresolved situation that a protagonist must find solutions to, rather than a set of destination that the protagonist must be dragged to.

Thematic screenwriting starts in the preparatory stages, as well. When creating a beat sheet, the key question for me is, what situations can I put my protagonist in, which will best demonstrate the theme? One of the things that I've found useful, when it comes to finding an interesting theme for a script, is to use the phrase "the price of..." and then add in the verb I'm interested in. So, for instance, if I was writing a Rom Com I might make the theme "the price of loving the wrong person." If I was writing a thriller, I might use a theme like "the price of revealing the truth." Themes based on "the price of..." work really well as an adjunct to structural screenwriting, simply because they mirror the need of the structural approach to throw the protagonist against a series of escalating dilemma, ultimately leading to a sacrifice.

A good example of this is the movie "Close Encounters of the Third Kind." If you imagine that the theme of that movie is "the price of chasing the truth" then you can see how Richard Dreyfus' character is constantly challenged to look at the price of following his vision. Firstly, he loses his job, then you watch him chose between his obsession and his family, then as he moves forwards he's asked to chose between his personal safety and his vision... at each point he's presented with the bill for those choices. By structuring the movie that way, the audience are taken on a coherent journey. It's also a journey can relate to, not because of the circumstance of the journey (UFOs) but because pretty much every family has watched a family member or friend chose between an obsession and their loved ones. Drefus's irrational behaviour isn't that diferent from the choice an alcholic might make, in chosing their addiction over their family.

That brings me to the other point about thematic screenwriting, which is that there is a clear connection between it and good quality observation of the human condition.

Basically, by picking a theme, a writer is saying that they want to explore a particular aspect of the human condition. By doing that, when plotting they chose sequences that relate to that theme, rather than just hammering the characters into a drab and meandering plot. The quality of the writing, both at the structural and the scene level, will ultimately depend the quality of the writer's observations and thoughts about how human beings behave. This is where the real work takes place, the place that moves a script up to the next level. It is also the reason that, for me, the movies of the 1970's were streets ahead of current studio fodder. Jaws, Close Encounters, Bladerunner, French Connection, The Godfather, Scarface, Taxi Driver... each and every one of these classic, timeless movies, were both entertaining, good box office and cinema gold, simply because they were written by writers who understood the human condition and had something interesting to say about it.

For me, that is the core of good screenwriting... understand the human condition and have something to say about that. And, regardless of a writer's structural skills, all the hard lifting takes place at a thematic level. It is all about observation and telling truths about the theme... leading the audience on a coherent journey, with which they can identify. And, if you ask me, these are the elements that are missing from modern screenwriting. These are the elements that could transform independent cinema, once it grows out of its fetishistic attachment to cameras, fake blood and marketing ploys.

keep writing and viva la revolution

Posted via email from Filmutopia's Sunday Morning Movie Blog

Sunday Blog: That's Why Your Script is So Very Boring

photo by jimmymac333

For the last month, I have been banging the drum loudly about the importance of the scene. About how I believe there is a real need to take both a cinematic and thematic approach to the writing of scripts, rather than just seeing the scene as a structural unit. This week I want to bite the bullet and write specifically about how I approach that task. I'm doing this mainly to clear my own head, but also because most scripts are fairly boring to read, and I believe this is largely because they are focused on the wrong areas. Of course, as usual, all I am doing here is writing about what I do when faced with a writing project. It's not meant to be instructive, helpful, a template for success or even definitively right... it's just what I am thinking about these days, about the task of writing for the screen. So, with that caveat in place, let's have at it.

Cinematic and thematic screenwriting is a big subject to cover on a Sunday morning before the first cup of tea, so this week I'm only going to write about the cinematic element. I'll pick up on the thematic element next week.

The first thing I need to do, is to contradict myself by saying the scene, as a unit, isn't that important for writers and that some of the information currently guiding writers is misguided in the way it discusses the basic units of story-telling.

For me, the scene isn't really a writer's way of looking at screenplays. A scene is a unit of story-telling which relates specifically to production. Basically, a scene is defined as "the part of a story which can be told in one location, without having to relocate the camera crew."  So, the scene is really about the practicalities of production, which isn't the same as understanding the flow of the story. For the writer, the natural way to break and understand a story is to see it in terms of sequences. A sequence is a coherent lump of story, which can take place in one or multiple locations. Sequences can and do run through multiple scenes.

I hadn't thought of this before I started writing today, but some of the pacing problems I see in scripts, relate specifically to writers confusing the role of the scene and the role of the sequence. If you confuse the two, it's possible to force distinct lumps of story (a sequence) into one location (a scene), instead of keeping the story moving. The scene as a unit doesn't have to have to contain a coherent lump of story, not in the way a sequence does... and, when people do stuff a unit of story into a scene, it restricts movement and it most cases it forces down the pace of the story-telling, placing more pressure onto the dialogue. Or in other words, the story starts to drag because the focus has shifted to the static and the expositional.

For me, the purpose of a script is solely to sell my visualisation of the movie to the reader. This is an important distinction from other ways of viewing a script. Particularly the idea that the purpose of the script could be solely to describe the journey of the characters. For me, a script isn't a description of what the characters do, and what they say. Instead the script is a transcription of my visualisation of the piece.

The visualisation is massively important. The movie I have in my head needs to make it onto the page, in some readable, coherent form. Not only that, the visualisation has to inspire producers, directors and actors.

For instance, scenes need to be placed in specific, visually understood locations. I need to be able to see each of these places clearly in my mind and also be able to sell the visual sense of that location to the readers. The locations are just as important as the inner lives of the characters. In fact, in thematic screenwriting, the relationship between the characters and their environment should underpin the theme of the story. Rather than depending on a contrived conversation to show a character's sense of isolation, it is more cinematic and more thematic to show this through their relationship to their environment. This is taking the story-telling out of the dialogue and out of the specific actions, and seeing the entire range of story-telling components on offer.

In some sequences, what the character is wearing can tell the audience more than their dialogue. As can their relationships to specific place, or their relationships to important and significant objects.

In terms of the actual writing, the "action" element of the script is better seen as "description." Description not just of what the characters are doing, but more especially how details of environment, action and movement reveal the conflicts and connections of the story. With this kind of story-telling 75% of the conversation with the audience takes place within the "action." The dialogue only really carries emotional tension between characters. By forcing the story-telling into the action, this frees up the dialogue to do what it does best, that is, to demonstrate the emotional shifts, tensions, connections and schisms between characters. Of course, not all of that needs to be carried in the dialogue. It is quite a common technique to have a character say one thing in the dialogue, whilst revealing to the audience the lie of that statement through their actions.

So, in terms of the difference between cinematic writing and structural, it is largely about seeing the sequence as the unit of story as opposed to the scene; it is about keeping the story moving rather than getting stuck in one location, trying to reach your story goals via exposition; and, it is about seeing the script as the sale of a visualisation, in which key story-telling elements are embedded in the visual and where dialogue is about the interplay emotional shifts, rather than the primary driving force of the story, through which everything must be conveyed.

Or, to put it simply... show me, don't tell me!

Of course, showing not telling is a lot easier to do, once you understand that you don't have to progress your story in every scene, providing each scene is part of a coherent sequence.

keep writing and viva la revolution

Posted via email from Filmutopia's Sunday Morning Movie Blog